{"id":268219,"date":"2026-02-01T05:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/268219\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T05:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:03:11","slug":"a-g-cook-on-scoring-charli-xcx-film-avoiding-brat-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/268219\/","title":{"rendered":"A. G. Cook on Scoring Charli xcx Film, Avoiding Brat Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen it came to finding a composer for Charli xcx<\/a>\u2018s mockumentary \u201cThe Moment<\/a>,\u201d no one made more sense than her longtime producer and friend A. G. Cook. Though he\u2019d never scored a feature before, his fingerprints are all over \u201cBrat,\u201d Charli\u2019s seminal 2024 album that became a lime-green, party-girl phenomenon and serves as the backdrop for the Aidan Zamiri-directed film. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cThe Moment,\u201d which premiered at Sundance Film Festival before opening in select theaters on Friday, an alternate-reality Charli must choose between standing by her art or selling out when a sinister director (played by Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd) is hired to make her concert movie. But \u201cThe Moment\u201d mostly avoids songs from \u201cBrat,\u201d relying instead on an electrifying score from Cook that evokes \u2014 though doesn\u2019t directly pull from \u2014 the sonic landscape of the album.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been working with Charli for so long that, reading the script and seeing the fly-on-the-wall situations with venues, managers, tours \u2014 that feels very funny and also real and vivid to me,\u201d Cook told Variety over Zoom just hours before he took off for Sundance. \u201c\u2018Brat\u2019 is used almost to haunt Charli as a character, so for me it\u2019s just a really nice opportunity to think about the palette of that album but also twist it in ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Cook speaks more about scoring \u201cThe Moment,\u201d how David Lynch\u2019s \u201cMulholland Drive\u201d inspired him and the film\u2019s big \u201cBitter Sweet Symphony\u201d needle drop. <\/p>\n

\t\tWhen did you first\u00a0hear\u00a0about \u201cThe Moment\u201d and how was the idea of scoring it brought to you?\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think it\u2019s been exactly a year since I read the script and actually started doing some bits of the sound already. It was sent around in January, and it was during the L.A. fires as well, so I was supposed to be in L.A. and then I wasn\u2019t and I used the extra week or two to start doing bits of the music. I did a lot it before they shot, and then obviously I worked on it again to picture afterwards. There was a lot of reasons for that, but it was nice because it also meant that it was part of the Coachella and Glastonbury sets and it was in Aidan and the cast and crew\u2019s ears and minds as they were actually [filming].<\/p>\n

\t\t\u201cDread,\u201d in which you sample Charli and Icona Pop\u2019s \u201cI Love It,\u201d is the song that was used at Coachella and Glastonbury, right?\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDread\u201d was used for that kind of first trailer at the end of Coachella, and then there\u2019s a longer version we zoomed in on for Glastonbury with the \u201cBrat\u201d backdrop going on fire. They\u2019re all sort of different parts of the longer track. And there\u2019s other way subtler things, like me playing bits and pieces in DJ sets around that time. But \u201cDread\u2019s\u201d been the one that is the kind of main theme, even though it\u2019s used a bit differently in the movie edit.<\/p>\n

\t\tThis is your first time scoring a feature film. What was your approach?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a really weird, once-in-a-lifetime brief anyway just because of being involved in \u201cBrat.\u201d I had resisted doing full-length music scores \u2014 I\u2019d done some short pieces and I have some really close friends who do film music constantly so I know how much work that is. I basically set up all these rules for myself. I was like OK, I don\u2019t want any of Charli\u2019s vocal in the score, like I don\u2019t want to use her voice unless you see it on the screen \u2014 she\u2019s rehearsing a song or she hears it in a car. And we only break that at the end with the \u201cI Love It\u201d [sample] in \u201cDread,\u201d but that\u2019s also such a strange use of it. It\u2019s like, nothing to do with \u201cBrat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI had this palette that almost felt like a full score before they shot, like really within a week of reading the script. But then, obviously there were these certain scenes that I really wanted to perfect to picture. Towards the end of the film is where this other, more emotional music takes over that really has to work with the exact dialogue and monologues. <\/p>\n

\t\tTell me more about subverting the sonic palette of \u201cBrat\u201d for the score.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s bits and pieces of \u201cBrat,\u201d but I\u2019m not using the actual melodic content \u2014 there\u2019s a few of the same harsh synth textures, but they\u2019re actually used quite sparingly and toward the end of the film they start to fall apart. There\u2019s some referencing of that bass that you might hear on \u201c365,\u201d so it was a little bit of that DNA. But on \u201cBrat\u201d itself, I was having a lot more fun. You know, even just how we did drums and recording stuff, this was a lot more controlled. Like there\u2019s not much drums in this, and when they come in it\u2019s really obvious.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m\u00a0also\u00a0a big fan\u00a0of scores with a lot of\u00a0silences\u00a0in them, so\u00a0this is something I had to push and pull a lot. There\u2019s\u00a0something\u00a0really awkward\u00a0about the way this whole film is shot, you know?\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0got this fly-on-the-wall\u00a0quality and\u00a0occasionally you see glimpses of Charli as this superstar.\u00a0So\u00a0I wanted it to have this feeling of\u00a0really extreme\u00a0music moments and then things completely vanish.<\/p>\n

\t\tWere you inspired by any other film scores while making this one?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it was the L.A. fires and I was writing was also the same week that David Lynch died. And I\u2019m a big fan of Lynch and all the Angelo Badalementi soundtracks like \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d and \u201cMulholland Drive.\u201d I was rewatching some Lynch stuff, especially \u201cMulholland Drive,\u201d which thematically felt like it was some relation to \u201cThe Moment.\u201d There\u2019s that opening shot where they\u2019re driving the canyons and it\u2019s reminiscent of the kind of \u201cTwin Peaks\u201d style of suspended classic chords, but the chord progression is moving so slowly that your brain doesn\u2019t necessarily latch on to them being the typical positive or negative, happy or sad \u2014 the emotion is pretty ambiguous. You can hear that across some of my other stuff, but I would say even though \u201cDread\u201d has this big panic thing, a lot of the chords actually move in this way. There\u2019s also one piece of music towards the end where Charli has a monologue and it shifts around but it never completely sits on one emotion. So that was a very conscious influence.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCharli xcx in \u201cThe Moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tBesides bits of \u201cBrat\u201d songs here and there, the only needle drop in \u201cThe Moment\u201d is the Verve\u2019s \u201cBitter Sweet Symphony.\u201d How did that come to be and how did it work with your score?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was in the script and it was pretty much like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to blow all the budget on one big sync.\u201d It felt very on brand, like \u201cOK, there\u2019s going to be only one needle drop and it\u2019s going to be really good and really important.\u201d And it stops the score itself from having to do this thing where it\u2019s just working around these big songs all the time. That gave it somewhere to go and kind of crescendo towards. And for that reason I have no strings in the score, like \u201cBitter Sweet\u201d will be the first string you hear. Probably the most intricate bit of the score is where it sort of morphs into \u201cBitter Sweet,\u201d and that was done really carefully. They managed to find some of the original stems, so I could really finesse and have it come in at just the right moment. I haven\u2019t heard many scores that really do that, where the one big needle drop also kind of morphs and oozes out of the previous score.<\/p>\n

\t\tWould you score a film again?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s funny is my tracks as A. G. Cook were getting longer and longer \u2014 from \u201c7G\u201d onwards I have these 10-minute tracks. And then some of those longer ones were already being used in small films here and there, and I\u2019ve done things for fashion soundtracks as well. There\u2019s a part of my music that really is related to that. So I think definitely, as long as the project is something that feels fresh. I\u2019m almost certain that I will.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it came to finding a composer for Charli xcx\u2018s mockumentary \u201cThe Moment,\u201d no one made more sense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[139999,8232,146,85,46,409,47780],"class_list":{"0":"post-268219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-a-g-cook","9":"tag-charli-xcx","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-the-moment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}